Edit MP3 tags directly in Windows Explorer, the fast and easy way

I am what is considered a Windows power user, addicted to music at that (with a 4 TB audio collection), yet it is only today that I discovered accidentally how easy it is to edit the tags of MP3 files directly in Windows Explorer. I knew that you could right click on one or more MP3 files to open their Properties card and then go to Details and edit tags — but there is a simpler way.

When you are in a folder containing MP3 files, if you want to change some or all of their tags, select the MP3 to be changed, press the Tab key and you will immediately give focus to an editable tag in the status bar of Windows Explorer. Change this tag as you wish. Pressing again the Tab key will give focus to the next MP3 tag. (This function, obviously, is not available if your files are protected, i.e. the “read only” option is checked).

After you finish your changes, press the Save button that has appeared on the Status bar of Windows Explorer. You can press Esc anytime to leave the status bar editor. You can do the same for more than one MP3 files, but in such a case some tags will be totally blank, which is natural, since each MP3 has e.g. a different title. But you can edit en mass album or artist information.

For a really heavy tag editing a specialized MP3 tag editor, such as MP3Tag, is necessary, but if you need to change something on-the-fly, it can be fast and easy, directly in Windows Explorer!

3 Responses

Thanks for the tip!
Do you know how to autonumber the # tag? My MP3 player uses the # tag to arrange files that have the same title. I want to know how to get Windows Explorer to number them incrementally (i.g. FileA #=1, FileB #=2, FileC #=3, …) All the standalone tag editors I’ve encountered require this to be done manually. I wouldn’t mind DOS commands, provided the instructions are clear.

Hi Ash. This tag is not a global auto-number, it is the number of a track in a particular album. If your mp3 editor is able to connect to online databases and retrieve album information, in most cases it can also get the track number. In Windows Explorer you can set this number only manually (as you can do also with the other tags). Your problem can be solved perhaps with a renaming utility, such as BRU, that will autonumber your files adding a number in the beginning of each file name.